2.0 HoA BURN - 3x curse INSANE dmg

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xMustard wrote:

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Ceryneian wrote:

hey i said a bunch of stuff!

awesome. glad you like the build. it would be a great help to have you aid in optimization and fresh ideas to spruce up and super power this build even more

im also sticking with the ranged version, i think im going to ditch my melee version and sell the gear so i can have a little more room to play with the ranged.
by all means the melee version is still very strong. not the same amount of dmg but much higher survivability especially with the insane regen you can get with bino's


so cery what is your damage per cast with burning arrow?
i find the burn on HoA to be all i need, and i don't think i'll worry bout putting ele prolif on burning arrow because i think it would be more ideal to raise its dmg so your overkill dmg is higher for the HoA burn.
once i 6L my bow and socket PPAD im pretty sure my maximum hit dmg will reach upwards of 18-19k (without crit multi factored, or the curses). this obviously causes extreme overdmg.

but yes, absolutely you can run something other than drillneck and even other than pierce. i've tried it and it works just as good, really. you can run a different quiver and literally run 5x full heavy support dmg gems such as
phys to lightning / added fire dmg / WED / PPAD / crit dmg

i do like the idea of having 3x 6L at your disposal, that would be extremely powerful. it would take a little bit more micro-managing, which im not personally fond of (i play very lazily, haha) but it would be extremely powerful.

another skill that does do well with this build is vaal burning arrow. its base dmg of 160% is enormous (highest in game i believe) and it has 100% hit chance. with pierce its even more powerful because it will do its massive explosion to each target it hits which would create a LOT of burn on its own.

also i see the difference in your tree. other than 8 more passives that you have for being such high level, haha, what is your chance to hit? granted this is supposed to be based off lvl 80 max mob level, so showcasing it at level 92 or w/e you are will be lower than it actually is i believe.

i do however heavily suggest the straight elemental damage boost at shadow start because this scales your hit damage AS WELL AS your HoA burn dmg. so you're essentially double dipping your bonuses with the same passives, which is fantastic.
i think if you unspec out of deadly draw 4 passives and add it to shadow ele dmg you'll gain a giant boost in DPS. not sheet dps but it should probably stay around the same actual damage, if not slightly more (if you convert 100% of your dmg to elemental like i do) but you'll also gain 88% more overkill burn dmg on HoA.

Well I am using Glyph Mark xD, but when I get back in the game I will check my per-hit damage. Still I had made that point-blank Puncture build, and this build is so much better.

I think you are right that having Ele Prolif on Burning Arrow is not that great. If I rely on HoA proliferation I can then add back in cold damage on gear right?

I hope you can try the Curse on Hit weapon swap some time - just set the hotkeys to what you like and you will see that it doesn't take that much micro. Besides with a ranged build I feel a lot of the time you are running to avoid damage or to position better and this is when it is ideal to weapon swap and shoot once or twice for curses.

I linked my CoH with Assassin's Mark + Elemental Weakness + Blind. I am actually using split arrow linked with pierce, but I might take out the pierce gem if I go with Drillneck. This could improve the COH setup vs. Lightning Arrow because you then free up a gem slot to add another support for the COH. For me this seems to be ideal because I usually just curse bosses, so I don't really need massive massive AOE COH set-up.

Also, any math we could do to see for the 3rd curse if Vulnerability is lower/higher than Flammability? If I can balance out my resistances I will run the curse ring and then might use Temp Chains / Flammability / Vulnerability for the 3rd curse.

Ah Vaal Burning Arrow - I didn't even know this existed (I hardly play ranged builds). Will check it out!

My accuracy is OK I think - 86% with that tree I posted.

So question on the tree - since HoA is based on % of your physical damage wouldn't it be better to grab phys nodes instead of elemental damage nodes. The burn of HoA is directly proportional to the HoA damage so a 10% phys nodes would increase it almost the same as a 10% elemental nodes right? It would depend on your respectivel total phys % increases and ele % incresaes vs. the MORE multipliers like PPAD and WED.

I had this same problem with my LS build where specing into phys nodes was better than getting stuff like Arcing Blows / Forces of Nature.

Also, how about adding a 4th link to HoA like Fire Pen or something? Will have to drop reduced mana but I see you do not use Hatred or Grace anyway so the extra reserve would not be that BIG a deal.

For the extra 6L - you could maybe go crazy and try some sort of HOA 6L set-up and only run that reservation with a Reduced Mana Gem. Or maybe just do 6L single target in that. IF you do weapon swap ofc xD.

EDIT: Hmm looks like Fire Pen cannot work with HoA as it does not change the mana reserve. Anyone know if Conc. Effect more area damage applies to HoA? It is not showing this mod when I link it but the mana reserve increases.

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Panini_aux_olives wrote:

On the archer tree: don't you think it would be better to take the sniper cluster instead of master fletcher? 6% damage lost but projectile damage also scales elemental part. And then you might as well connect to life nodes through Coordination instead of the two 10 int nodes, unless the int is needed for the auras, herald, and curses.

On the melee tree: I feel that it still needs some work.
- There's lots of melee physical damage which doesn't scale the projectile part of lightning strike (or molten strike, they're quite interchangeable).
- The pure movement speed might not be as much needed since we have whirling blade which is a totally broken skill for quick moves and evades. But it looks like you really like increased evasion too, because of your shield (see below).
- I don't like the shadow area that much. Fire and lightning damages are taken but the 5 elemental nodes are left. But I don't see how to fix this without spending more point. The best I could do the as few points as possible is this tree, but this is not my preferred choice.

Btw, your melee gear is not properly displayed. So we can't figure out how much your shield is good to justify all these shield related nodes ;)

Other things I'm concerned with:
- no problem with lack of leech?
- reflect, obviously. I've experimented one shot death to physical reflect too much. The very high elemental damage you have here is quite worrying ;)

Maybe I'll reroll one of my rangers into the archer version. I also wanted to test herald of hash to the fullest so it's a good opportunity :).

on the archer tree, sniper should not give more dmg than master fletcher because of all the conversion. physical dmg is boosted, which boosts the bonus from added fire/phys to lightning, which is boosted by +ele dmg. projectile dmg just boosts your total dmg essentially, if im correct. i have tested what gives the best bonus and it is actually phys dmg, especially flat phys dmg.
that being said, i was planning on getting the sniper cluster but decided on movement speed stacking instead. right now honestly 2-3k dmg is basically unnoticeable, but to boost your clear speed the movement speed is absolutely amazing.
also, yes, the int is required to run HoT and wrath. i need 151 so that is why i kept those int nodes in play.


as for the melee portion, i do need to update it. i don't think i can post my gear and such in the main post with the ranged version because gear is shared, so it won't post both at once etc.
i just need to take time to update the melee version. i did change the tree, spec'd out of arcing blows and added the ele dmg on shadow start because it also boosts the burn dmg of HoA. as does the fire dmg bonus, that is why i got those as the bridge.
also i don't care about projectile dmg or anything about lightning strike/molten strike projectiles. the projectiles do not matter at all. those skills are used because they have high base dmg and that is all. it is about the initial hit dmg to be as high as possible.

the movement speed is optional, but i enjoy it muchly. it highly boosts clear speed and is a very effective defensive tool to speed around.
sure you can use whirling blades, but i do not focus on attack speed at all because again its about the initial hit dmg, not DPS. so honestly im not sure how much faster if at all whirling blades/faster attacks would be compared to 196% movement speed with both flasks activated.

leech is absolutely not necessary for the melee version. bino's regens thousands of hp per second and is literally much more effective than life leech (even vaal pact).
on cery's build i posted a screenshot of 9800 life regen per second and i constantly in normal gameplay get 6,000+
reflect is kind of funny for both builds. melee actually doesn't have an issue with it. i have not yet 1 shot myself on elemental reflect somehow, and im not sure how, but i don't. if you're worried about it you just take out phys to lightning gem - there, no problem at all.
for the ranged version elemental reflect is scary. you can do just fine with spamming lightning arrow (your CoH setup) to kill everything. if you shoot burning arrow into elemental reflect you will easily 1 shot yourself even with 10,000 HP you'll one shot yourself.

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Ceryneian wrote:

Well I am using Glyph Mark xD, but when I get back in the game I will check my per-hit damage. Still I had made that point-blank Puncture build, and this build is so much better.

I think you are right that having Ele Prolif on Burning Arrow is not that great. If I rely on HoA proliferation I can then add back in cold damage on gear right?

I hope you can try the Curse on Hit weapon swap some time - just set the hotkeys to what you like and you will see that it doesn't take that much micro. Besides with a ranged build I feel a lot of the time you are running to avoid damage or to position better and this is when it is ideal to weapon swap and shoot once or twice for curses.

I linked my CoH with Assassin's Mark + Elemental Weakness + Blind. I am actually using split arrow linked with pierce, but I might take out the pierce gem if I go with Drillneck. This could improve the COH setup vs. Lightning Arrow because you then free up a gem slot to add another support for the COH. For me this seems to be ideal because I usually just curse bosses, so I don't really need massive massive AOE COH set-up.

Also, any math we could do to see for the 3rd curse if Vulnerability is lower/higher than Flammability? If I can balance out my resistances I will run the curse ring and then might use Temp Chains / Flammability / Vulnerability for the 3rd curse.

Ah Vaal Burning Arrow - I didn't even know this existed (I hardly play ranged builds). Will check it out!

My accuracy is OK I think - 86% with that tree I posted.

So question on the tree - since HoA is based on % of your physical damage wouldn't it be better to grab phys nodes instead of elemental damage nodes. The burn of HoA is directly proportional to the HoA damage so a 10% phys nodes would increase it almost the same as a 10% elemental nodes right? It would depend on your respectivel total phys % increases and ele % incresaes vs. the MORE multipliers like PPAD and WED.

I had this same problem with my LS build where specing into phys nodes was better than getting stuff like Arcing Blows / Forces of Nature.

Also, how about adding a 4th link to HoA like Fire Pen or something? Will have to drop reduced mana but I see you do not use Hatred or Grace anyway so the extra reserve would not be that BIG a deal.

For the extra 6L - you could maybe go crazy and try some sort of HOA 6L set-up and only run that reservation with a Reduced Mana Gem. Or maybe just do 6L single target in that. IF you do weapon swap ofc xD.

EDIT: Hmm looks like Fire Pen cannot work with HoA as it does not change the mana reserve. Anyone know if Conc. Effect more area damage applies to HoA? It is not showing this mod when I link it but the mana reserve increases.

you can add cold damage, but it is not ideal at all. with any amount of cold dmg as you told me before you'll shatter everything on crits and it will be more difficult to proliferate the burn.
you can still get the proliferated burn however, if you shatter an enemy beside a mob you didn't hit (since burning arrow remains single target) it will set them on fire, and when they die their corpse will proliferate the burn.
when you watch my vids tho you see everything burns everything. you will not see that effect at all with cold dmg and the biggest problem this causes is against bosses. if you shoot something near a boss but it isn't close enough, you'll be reduced to 1v1 against the boss.
this isn't the biggest issue, since again everything is focused on damage per hit so you can literally one shot most bosses in the game.

as you say, ya you don't need curses except mostly versus bosses. i curse everything tho because its hilarious to watch everything burn instantly, plus it keeps my power charges up for more crit chance with assassin's mark.

however, for curses flammability is absolutely better than vulnerability because it reduces the resistance to your initial hit with burning arrow (added fire dmg and BA physical conversion and HoA bonus is a LOT of fire dmg) as well as reducing the resistances to the HoA burn. so again you're double dipping.
vulnerability is decent, but i did test it. no real math to go on because its so difficult to do with reducing resistances (not sure how much they are to begin with etc) but just try it, you'll easily notice the difference. vulnerability is nowhere near as good as flammability.

and no - HoA burn dmg does not scale with physical dmg bonus because it is an ignite. ignite however does scale with 1) elemental damage 2) burn damage 3) damage over time damage 4) fire damage and 5) area of effect damage since HoA is an AoE.

however i do agree you could do something crazy and get a 6L HoA setup - this would be fantastic. fire penetration however does not work with HoA because it is not a hit, it is a damage over time. but you could still do it, im just not sure what you could do. any added damage stuff like chaos or lightning dmg wouldn't affect it either because again, it is not a hit.
ash, inc burn dmg, reduced mana, ele proliferation, inc aoe, conc effect. that is about all i know that could possibly fill up a 6L. you could use chance to ignite purely for its quality bonus of burn duration i guess.

right now i use wrath for more damage because i don't need grace and don't want hatred, but you could skip out on that and run conc effect with HoA. the mana would go through the roof obviously especially because conc effect quality (reduced mana cost) does not apply to reserved mana, but you would get insane damage.
in the video i think you can see, if you watch closely, the actual AoE of HoA is much bigger than what is represented by the ele prolif circle. im talking quite a bit bigger. i see it all the time on my normal gameplay, so you can definitely afford conc effect.
currently having an increase of 187% dmg on HoA (equating bonus of 450% overkill burn dmg) this would be boosted by an insane 69% with conc effect, effectively giving you an overkill burn dmg of 559%.
obviously that is just...its honestly probably unnecessary, lol. that is so huge and things die so fast already, to have 109% more overkill dmg is just nuts.

edit: i've decided to sell my melee version gear so i can fund 6Ling my bow. i yolo'd it and so far no links so im stuck with 4L, which is still so powerful to 1 shot majority of the game, lol.
but i do want the extra currency to test the ranger build more because i feel its so much more superior. so im going to cut out the melee version completely and focus on the ranged. if anybody was interested in the melee version or something you can PM me about it and i'll try to answer any questions that way.

even tho im limited to just a 4L right now, i did a little test of HoA with conc effect compared to normal wrath+HoA setup and it seems like wrath+HoA is the better outcome with some estimated guessing math.

without wrath with conc effect my max burning arrow dmg per hit is 7689, with 554% burn dmg, 365% crit dmg. this equates to an overkill dmg of 23000 factoring no resistances and HP of 5,000, which translates to burn of 127,000 dmg per second.

with wrath without conc effect my max burning arrow dmg per hit is 9580, with 450% burn dmg, 365% crit dmg. this equates to an overkill dmg of 30000 factoring no resistances and HP of 5,000, which translates to a burn of 135,000 dmg per second.

as you can see, wrath is higher. there are of course variables here. running wrath raises your lightning dmg which some mobs are resistant to (and some map mods ofc) etc, but it is a straight up boost in your dmg. overall i think if you're limited to a 4L on HoA than running another damage aura such as wrath is your best bet, instead of reserving 65% aura with 4L HoA.

now, even with a 6L HoA i do not think there are any other support gems that can boost its actual damage other than inc burn dmg. the only other thing you can add is utility, but you can keep a reduced mana gem linked.
so if you're able to run a 6L HoA you're probably best running ash, inc burn, reduced mana, ele prolif, inc aoe, conc effect.
this will still cost a good amount of mana, but you should still have enough to run wrath but not herald of lightning. this won't crush your damage per hit much at all but will still give you your massive HoA burn.

i may actually try this, since i do still have my 6L windripper i can just recolour my chest to HoA colours and be right as rain. i'd have to get used to swapping weapons tho.
its important that you'll need the HoA setup on your chest, so when you swap weapons it does not deactivate ash and needing to recast it every time.
so ash on chest, main atk on main bow, CoH on swap bow - there ya go

Ok that is interesting and good to know about Flammability. You should maybe check out Elemental Equilibrium. Your style of gameplay where you hit with Burning Arrow then spam LA can take advantage of Elemental Equilibrium for a massive -50% additional fire res reduction. Maybe something like this:

ya i did check that out. only problem is if you hit with more than one element than the resistance is boosted to both elements and only reduced for what wasn't used. if you hit with all 3 elements, you screw yourself and are literally just raising their resistance against all of your dmg because there is no element left out to reduce.

ive looked this over to see if there is a way to make this work but i don't see it. with lightning arrow you still have herald of ash active which would raise the fire resistance (and lightning) and only reduce the resistance against cold, which we do zero damage of.

so the only way to make it work would be to remove fire dmg from lightning arrow, but you can't because of herald of ash.

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xMustard wrote:

ya i did check that out. only problem is if you hit with more than one element than the resistance is boosted to both elements and only reduced for what wasn't used. if you hit with all 3 elements, you screw yourself and are literally just raising their resistance against all of your dmg because there is no element left out to reduce.

ive looked this over to see if there is a way to make this work but i don't see it. with lightning arrow you still have herald of ash active which would raise the fire resistance (and lightning) and only reduce the resistance against cold, which we do zero damage of.

so the only way to make it work would be to remove fire dmg from lightning arrow, but you can't because of herald of ash.

Hmm I forgot about that, but this is where weapon swap Curse on Hit would work very well - you weapon swap to Quill Rain with COH + LA - quill rain does such little damage you cannot kill anything on maps - you just need 1 or 2 shots to get off your curses and the elemental equilibrium. I know you say you don't want to do the micro but think of that extra massive fire res reduction.

Anyway that was just a random thought.

but again you have herald of ash active, so you'll always do fire dmg. unless you link it in your weapon to swap/curse but then you're turning HoA off every time you curse and would need to reactivate it to get the effect

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xMustard wrote:

but again you have herald of ash active, so you'll always do fire dmg. unless you link it in your weapon to swap/curse but then you're turning HoA off every time you curse and would need to reactivate it to get the effect

Ah you right, for some reason I kept thinking it would only activate when you kill something.

if you look back to the first page you will se that you already answered me but i have an other question. you said that on your gloves u put melee physical dmg gem to lvl it but what could i put if i wanted to have an other gem of any color

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buzzkillqc wrote:

if you look back to the first page you will se that you already answered me but i have an other question. you said that on your gloves u put melee physical dmg gem to lvl it but what could i put if i wanted to have an other gem of any color

ideal setup is to get your helmet with b,b,r and run wrath/herald of lightning/reduced mana and portal and so you can have your gloves completely open for whatever you want to run.

i'll probably eventually get my gloves as blink arrow, faster attacks, vaal grace and increased duration, so g,g,g,r on gloves.
or something with vaal DD just to keep the explosion fire theme going :D